Lights Out – a memoir of life in Cuba before and during Fidel Castro

Posted on November 27, 2016 by moonbridgebooks

Fidel Castro is dead. I can’t say RIP. Coincidentally, I just finished reading Lights Out:  A Cuban Memoir of Betrayal and Survival by Dania Rosa Nasca. Dania spent her childhood in Cuba under Castro and despises him for what he did to her homeland and her family. Her parents supported Castro’s revolution to depose Fulgencio Batista’s harsh rule and supposedly end dictatorship. Batista may have been a controlling dictator, but life was still good for the people, although it is likely things were going downhill due to corruption.

A charismatic Castro promised to bring back “the rule of law established by the republic’s constitution,” and became the people’s savior. Instead, he imposed a totalitarian government. Dania’s mother was traumatized by this betrayal and its effects and then by leaving her beloved elderly mother and other family behind to escape in 1970 on a US-sponsored Freedom Flight. She gave her children a better life, but was left mourning the past, “Mi Cubita, mi Cubita, how I loved you and how I lost you.”

I wanted to read Lights Out because I didn’t know much about Cuba, and the country is in the news these days due to renewing relations with the US after years of embargo to punish Castro. Of course, Castro wasn’t hurt by the embargo but his people were. Dictators and their henchmen always live well while the regular people suffer. Ms. Nasca details how a diverse population and thriving economy (based on sugar cane) spiraled down under Castro, while he touted to the world Cuba’s healthcare improvements and racial harmony.  According to Ms. Nasca, the healthcare improvements were for the elite followers while already good healthcare for the masses disintegrated. And racial harmony had existed before, but now “Judas goats” were spying on others regardless of race and reporting “bad” behavior to the authorities in return for favors.

Lights Out was a fast read for me, fascinating and unpleasant to learn how Castro fooled his followers and how communism works—or doesn’t. How more people might have escaped on Freedom Flights except they didn’t want to abandon their young male relatives who were all forbidden to leave. Dania combines her own childhood experiences with stories from her family and friends and with lots of research (sources documented in the end notes). She is definitely bitter at the loss of what Cuba once was, before Castro’s takeover in 1959. I did a little research of my own to find complicated Cuba was not all rosy before, but Castro definitely turned things dark. He won’t be forgotten, but now there is a light of hope as his brother Raul may feel more free to implement more changes to unburden his people.

“Soon there will be no one to remember the character of our street or of Cuba before Castro.” With her memoir, Lights Out, Dania has done her part to capture the lived history and culture of a country she and her family loved long ago. I highly recommend reading this book.

Gloria Estefan on Fidel Castro’s death
Reactions to Fidel Castro’s death

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Perhaps a light of hope now for the Cuban people

Posted in book reviews, book talk, heritage, history, multicultural, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

Veterans Day – honoring service and memories

Posted on November 7, 2016 by moonbridgebooks

Veterans Day is coming up – this Friday, November 11. The Battlefield Doc and I will be at a VFW post for breakfast and book signing. Doc loves to chat with other veterans, sharing where they were and what they did in the military and swapping stories. I watched the PBS documentary “Battle of Chosin” last week and was astonished to see all the combat video they had of the Korean War. Video that let me hear the horns and bugles of the Chinese attacking in the night, and the winter wind blowing down from Manchuria – brrr. Video and still photos that showed the horrors of what Americans and Chinese and Koreans lived and died through. Some of the survivors were interviewed, and many began to cry, even after all these years.

We need to see and to read about what our military men and women in combat areas go through. Six of our military men died last week, one in training stateside and the others in dangerous places overseas. We in our heated and cooled homes, sitting well-fed in our comfy chairs, need to be reminded now and then that we have survivors in our midst, many suffering PTSD, who deserve our respect and good medical care. Whether our veterans were in combat or not, they gave of themselves to our country, and the lucky ones lived to tell about it.

Doc said that often when he and his friend go out to eat, someone in the restaurant will buy their meal, sometimes anonymously. Doc wears his Korean War cap and his buddy is an elder veteran, too. Doc did not get any medals, but I’m glad he gets respect for all he did saving lives during that awful war.

On Veterans Day, set out your flag and listen to the stories.

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Doc talking to a reporter at his author event at the Kirkwood Public Library

 

 

 

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The art of memoir and writing about history

Posted on October 31, 2016 by moonbridgebooks

Mary Karr came to St. Louis again, this time to talk about The Art of Memoir, her latest popular book. She’s had quite a life and lived to tell about it: The Liars’ Club, Cherry, Lit. She said, “Writing is a way of connecting.” Connecting with yourself and with others. Her goal in writing is to “make the reader feel something.” Let them feel what it was like to be there.

More recently, I went to hear H.W. Brands talk about his book about the butting heads relationship between Harry Truman and General MacArthur during the Cold War, because I thought I might learn something new about the Korean War, beyond the research for Battlefield Doc. While Dr. Brands did have interesting things to say about “The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War,” I was surprised to hear him talk about the art of writing. The audience was mostly older than me—men and women old enough to remember this forgotten war—and I was not sure they were there to hear about writing skills.

Turns out, Dr. Brands, a historian, teaches writing, too. He knows that he needs to identify who he is writing for. He said his model reader wants to learn about the real world. Not everyone does. (Note: the reader audience for your memoir is not “everybody,” as many new authors believe.) Brands asked his writing students if they thought reading true stories was better than reading fiction. Some said no, because they read to escape from real life. And if they read anything historical with dates, that made them feel they were supposed to learn and remember—work! So Brands decided to write history as biographies that read more like novels. “History is boring, but biographies are interesting because they are about people” and not a bunch of dates and places. His wife reminded him of Elmore Leonard’s famous advice, “Take out the boring stuff.”

So, as you write your memoir, or a memoir/biography of a parent or grandparent, remember to take out the boring stuff and make the reader feel what it was like to be there. Many memoirs can use a sprinkling of history to help readers understand what is affecting the life of the author-subject, but don’t let the story get bogged down in the nitty-gritty. Battlefield Doc, although a war memoir, does not include many dates or place names because they are not important to the actual stories, and since it is not a (boring) history book. When you write, “talk” to your readers as though they are your new friends. I hope the older audience did pay a little attention to Dr. Brand’s writing advice, in case any of them decides to write a memoir.

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